Overall Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
Tengen was a publisher that produced non-licensed games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), titles that did not have the official Nintendo Seal of Approval and appeared on odd-looking dark cartridges for the 8-bit home console. One of these gems was Rolling Thunder in 1989, as developed by Namco and based on an arcade game.
Gameplay
This port of the Namco arcade cabinet released in 1986 is a fair translation, retaining the same style and feel. Rolling Thunder is a side-scrolling platformer with a thin male protagonist out to rescue his girlfriend; who was kidnapped by a secret villainous organization, of course. He can fire a pistol, or a machine gun later found; he can jump, or perform a higher jump to reach upper platformer; he can crouch, and jump from a crouch to jump down from platforms; and he has a two-hit health bar, so he can bump into enemies twice, but getting shot kills in one hit.
Rolling Thunder on the NES is a very challenging game. The challenge is in the form of the enemies, which take on various palette swaps from just a few different basic forms, most of which are KKK-like hooded figures, thus just rendered in different colors. The exceptions are some crazy level obstacles, like time-pattern lasers, some flaming energy enemies, and these weird mutant monster people that jump all over the place.
The hooded guns come in many shades, and each represents a different added trait or set of traits. These characteristics include taking multiple shots to die, the ability to fire back in return, crouching behind cover to fire, and/or coming out of the wall. It is the differing combinations of these hooded-goon flavors that create the challenge, especially in later levels when the player is encountering goons that can crouch, fire, and take multiple shots to kill. Even just one of these “super goons” can be rather tough to get past, requiring precision-jump bullet-dodging and precision-fire projectile placement.
Fortunately, there are passwords, so levels can be returned to for another try at a later time. Also, while the player’s character is running and jumping and shooting, there are various opportunities to take cover; but, more importantly, there are doors to hide behind, and some of these doors either offer more ammo or offer the machine gun, which of course fires at a faster rate, at an automatic clip when the B button is held down. The A button jumps, as it should, with A and Up activating the higher jump and Down appropriately crouching. Oh, and each stage has a time limit as well. That is Rolling Thunder in a nutshell.
Graphics
This game looks okay, but nothing great. Although the overall presentation looks fine, the level backgrounds and enemy designs are shamelessly recycled over and over, lending a very stale, stagnant sensation throughout the game. There are also these odd cutscenes depicting the girlfriend being kidnapped and injured and generally motivating the player to succeed. These scenes look decent, but the game overall still lacks creative vision. At least it fits the arcade-style run-and-gun gameplay.
Sound
The music is alright, but the sound effects are terrible. Firing the machine gun sounds nothing like a machine gun. The horrible departure from a gunshot noise is so distracting that no other effects or tracks are worth mentioning and analyzing. The machine gun firing effect is terrible.
Originality
Rolling Thunder on the NES is a faithful arcade port, which itself, let’s be honest, was a somewhat formulaic run-‘n’-gun platformer. To give credit where credit is due, though, no other video game pulls off the anxious, duck-and-cover, time-limit, hooded goons everywhere, secret base infiltration feel quite like the distinctive way that Rolling Thunder does.
Nonetheless, this stands as a stale, meh-sounding, visually recycling game that gets two and a half stars out of five because of its challenge level and the fact that even in being formulaic it sticks to the formula and executes it rather especially straightforwardly, providing it with the average rating.